Thesis, W.J. Cash and Me

It's about to be a long summer, friends. I've almost completed my MFA in Writing with only one thing standing in my way: my thesis, which I'm scheduled to defend on August 20. D-Day.

My thesis is based on proving and disproving the ideas put forth in W.J. Cash's book The Mind of the South. Before things start sounding too academic, allow me to clear this up for those of you who haven't read this 1941 treasure.

Cash, who incidentally hails from the piedmont of North Carolina, wrote and published a book that essentially bursts the bubble of Southern unreality. What do I mean by that exactly? By that I mean he claims the antebellum South wasn't quite as wistful and glamorous as it's made out to be. By that I mean he claims white men (and all men) worship white woman without just cause. By that I mean he basically said we were all full of horse shit and no great ideas had ever come out of South.

Crazy, right? Except that on many occasions he is -- dare I say it -- correct.

So the long and short of it is that my thesis will prove that he is right and that his arguments still have merit, but that those imperfections and flaws of character don't define the South. They mean we're bad people and they certainly don't mean we're stupid.

Bored yet? Good, because I'm not done yet.

One exciting discovery I made when re-reading ol' Cash is that he isn't as boring as I remember. I recall moaning and groaning my way through his text when I was forced to read it in undergrad. Now I'm willingly (sort of) picking it up, dusting it off and starting the journey all over again. And it doesn't suck.

I think I'm starting to grow up. Gasp!